Indonesia

Indonesia’s dry season has never been easy. Dry winds blow from Australia and rainfall is almost nonexistent, which leads to major forest fires, choking air pollution, and searing heat, along with the energy-sapping effect the season has on residents.
For many parts of Indonesia, one problem has

Terrorist attacks inevitably generate frenetic global media coverage, with pundits examining motives, ascertaining network links, and theorising new developments or political repercussions. Numbers of deceased and injured are central to initial reports, but eventually victims are reduced largely to

Air pollution is worsening in Jakarta and West Java, while tens of millions of people experienced a day-long blackout earlier this month after gas-powered electricity generators failed and significant proportions of eastern Indonesia have do not have reliable power supplies. So why does Indonesia

It has been a rough few months for Indonesia’s already beleaguered legal system: two cases, alike yet different, highlighting how minority groups continue to be disenfranchised across the archipelago nation.
In May, Meliana, a Chinese-Indonesian Buddhist was released on parole, having

One of the criticisms of the Pacific Islands Forum over the years relates to the regional grouping’s limited ability to advance its agenda in the face of the interests of Australia and New Zealand. The power imbalance hasn’t always made for a cohesive regionalism.
Yet it’s worth noting a

It has been an unusually intense time for elections across Southeast Asia in the past year with both a stunning upset and more predictable returns of incumbents.
But the striking thing from a quick tour of some of the main battlefields is how the general absence of clear policy reform debate in

President Joko Widodo, best known as Jokowi, just won the presidential election and will officially start his second term in October. Much of his economic homework is still outstanding, one of the most significant how to deal with the impact of trade war between the US and China.
The International

When I was a correspondent for the Financial Times in Jakarta, I often commiserated with my Australian media peers. While they worked hard to carve out time to shed light on the complexities, depth and wonder of Indonesia, they would inevitably be sucked into covering the latest high-pitched row

The end of the Ramadan fasting period is marked by a week-long holiday in Indonesia. In Jakarta, this means that almost half the population leave the city to travel back to their hometowns and villages to celebrate Idul Fitri with their families.
Usually, this exodus is marked by a noticeable

The re-election of India’s Narendra Modi and Indonesia’s Joko “Jokowi” Widodo saw India-Indonesia relations take another step forward after both leaders congratulated each other on social media. The results put both leaders in a strong position to advance a comprehensive strategic

Images of rioting by supporters of defeated presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta have been beamed around the world this week, tainting what was otherwise a free, fair and peaceful election in the world’s third biggest democracy.
At least eight people were reported killed and

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong’s efforts to set out a vision for Australia’s foreign policy on Asia, embodied in Labor’s “FutureAsia” plans, are admirable. The specific focus of fostering knowledge of and engagement with Southeast Asia is welcome.
A key part of

The Australia Indonesia free trade agreement presents an opportunity to strengthen relations between the two countries, but is Australia ready?
Talks about a free trade agreement with Indonesia have been long standing, and the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was

Indonesia’s national leaders and politicians have mostly paid more attention to domestic issues for the country’s upcoming general elections compared to regional and global challenges. Yet after the voters cast their ballots on Wednesday, whomever is elected president, vice president and the

As Indonesians go to the polls on Wednesday, questions have arisen around the business interests of the man who could be their next vice president.
The youngest among the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, charismatic political newcomer Sandiaga “Sandi” Uno has undoubtedly injected

In January, during Indonesia’s first presidential debate in the lead up to the Indonesian election next week on 17 April, Indonesian president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo proclaimed that he and his running mate, Ma’ruf Amin “do not have a track record of human rights violations.” Jokowi’s

With a week left until Indonesia’s presidential election, polls are tightening and huge mass rallies show the 193 million voters keen to have their say. For incumbent Joko Widodo, better known as Jokowi, his not-so-hidden strength has been his three-year-old grandson, Jan Ethes.
Jokowi’s

How do you organise free and fair elections in a sprawling developing country beset by political corruption, bureaucratic incompetence and organisational inefficiency?
For Indonesia – and its 193 million voters – the answer lies in the vast number of polling stations, the use of a metal nail (

How can we address the profound gender disparity that afflicts the vast majority of the world’s parliaments?
Fewer than 10 countries are close to parity between men and women in their main national legislative chamber and only 3 – Bolivia, Cuba, and Rwanda – have more women parliamentarians

A murderous terrorist attack by an Australian white supremacist on two mosques in New Zealand does not, at first sight, look like a bilateral issue for Jakarta and Canberra.
But Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, called in Gary Quinlan, the Australian ambassador in Jakarta, on Monday

The signing on 4 March of the Indonesia Australia–Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) has been hailed as a major bilateral trade agreement and a diplomatic breakthrough given recent tensions between Canberra and Jakarta. However, now the negotiations are concluded, there may

At the very time Indonesian women are lauded for their campaign skills (look at Eva Bande and the Kendeng farmers, who just won the Yap Thiem Hien Award for organising protests to protect the environment), it remains a lamentable shame that the role women in Indonesian politics doesn’t show any

Indonesia’s second presidential debate might be a source of amusement for many Indonesian voters, thanks to the colourful exchange between the incumbent Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and the contender Prabowo Subianto. Analyses, fact-checks, and memes referring to and criticising the candidates’ debating

Indonesia, for a country of 260 million people covering a vast archipelago, is often remarked to have a small global profile. This wasn’t always the case. In the early years after gaining independence, for example, Indonesia’s Sukarno was a leader of the non-aligned movement during the Cold War

With the slick presenters, questions pulled out of a fishbowl, and baritone voice-overs, the casual viewer might have thought this was a game show rather than a political battle to lead a nation of more than 260 million people.
It is true that the content can be lightweight and the format is

The Philippine government’s premature declaration that Indonesians were the perpetrators of the Jolo cathedral bombing has set back the prospects for regional cooperation on terrorism and reinforced a perception among Indonesian counterparts of the Philippines as an unreliable and unprofessional

It is almost half-a-century since economist James Tobin proposed a small transaction tax to stabilise volatile global capital flows.
Tobin’s proposal followed the breakdown of the Bretton-Woods fixed exchange rate system in 1971. A tiny once-off transaction tax wouldn’t have much effect on

After Jim Yong Kim resigned last month, President Donald Trump indicated he intends to nominate senior US Treasury official David Malpass to lead the World Bank. Under an unofficial agreement, the World Bank President always comes from the United States. Although the multilateral development

In a bid to combat the scourge of misinformation, the popular instant messaging app WhatsApp is now placing a ceiling on the number of recipients to whom users can forward messages.
The technology company announced this new measure at an event in Jakarta, where misinformation has become a

President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo’s decision to release Abu Bakar Ba’asyir is misguided, legally questionable, and politically inept.
It sends the message that if one defies the state long enough, it will eventually capitulate. It emboldens those who see democracy as incompatible with Islam

During the November APEC Summit, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the US will work with Australia and Papua New Guinea to develop the Lombrum naval base on Manus Island.
Analysts have debated whether the plan is part of a pushback against Chinese encroachment in the Pacific and how

When Tony Abbott became prime minister, he immediately went about implementing his policy of “turning back the boats”. This was in the face of warnings that the practice would not only cause a major diplomatic rift between Australia and Indonesia but the very real possibility of a

Observers of Indonesian politics would be forgiven for predicting that Indonesia’s presidential election campaign would be highly divisive, based on the Gerindra opposition’s highly effective exploitation of religious and ethnic schisms to defeat incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) in the

Indonesia is moving into election mode. There will be sweeping general elections in Indonesia in April next year for the presidency, the national parliament, provincial parliaments, and at the regional level across the nation. Australians might go to the polls around the same time, but there will be

Between Prabowo Subianto’s promise to “Make Indonesia Great Again” and Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s warning that “winter is coming”, all eyes in Indonesia are transfixed on the upcoming presidential election.
Yet beyond the campaign trail, Jokowi’s pandering to the Indonesian armed

Indonesia just can’t catch a break.
Following earthquakes in Lombok in August, and a twin earthquake and tsunami in Palu in Central Sulawesi in October killing thousands, the country is once again reeling after Lion Air flight JT610 crashed into the Java Sea on 29 October. The plane was carrying

This is the second of two articles examining the politics behind Indonesia’s revised anti-terror law in the wake of the May family suicide bombings. The first article can be found here.
The counter-terrorism landscape in Southeast Asia has fundamentally changed over the 15 years since Indonesia

This is the first of two articles examining the politics behind Indonesia’s revised anti-terror law in the wake of the May family suicide bombings. The second article is available here.
On 25 May 2018, less than two weeks after a series of suicide bombings and armed attacks on churches and

When international and local media started to feature stories about the heroes of Palu after the Central Sulawesi city was hit by 7.5 magnitude earthquake and a three metre tsunami on 28 September, my thoughts went to two women. Nerlian “Lian” Gogali and Nurlaela “Ella”

Yet another tsunami in Indonesia. The earthquake and resulting wave of destruction in Palu, Central Sulawesi, is the second major natural disaster to strike the country this year.
It is not yet two months since more than 500 people died in the August earthquake in Lombok near Bali.

When an ethnic Chinese woman in Medan named Meliana was sentenced on 21 August* to 18 months on blasphemy charges for complaining about the volume of the call to prayer (azan) in the mosque next door, outrage erupted across Indonesia.
More than 50,000 people joined an online petition to free

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is visiting Indonesia this week on his first international trip as Australia’s leader. The two governments will announce a new trade deal and Australia is keen to show this as a deepening of ties between the two nations.
But in his meetings with Indonesian President

Development lesson
Australia can probably thank China’s amorphous Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for helping push over the line the bilateral trade agreement that Prime Minister Scott Morrison will claim as his first diplomatic triumph on Friday.
The key breakthrough in the agreement is set to

The confirmation by President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo’s of conservative Islamic cleric Ma’ruf Amin as running mate for the April 2019 presidential contest evoked disappointment among constituencies in Indonesia committed to democracy and pluralism.
Interpreted as a forced compromise, a Jokowi-Ma

While some may argue that sport and politics should never mix, many governments have perfected the art of the sport–politics cocktail. It has a name: sports diplomacy.
Countries such as Australia even have a “Sports Diplomacy Strategy” that explains how this heady concoction is meant

Last month, Amnesty International held a major press conference for the release of its first research report on Indonesia since opening a dedicated office in Jakarta.
Representatives of all major local and international media outlets, including newswires, Al Jazeera, the ABC, and The Australian,

It didn’t even make the news in Australia, but two weeks ago India announced it will now allow Indonesian tourists to visit without having to apply or pay for a visa.
This development allows Indonesian nationals to choose India, in addition to all the ASEAN nations, as a holiday destination

Regional elections took place across Indonesia on 27 June, when local voters went to the polls to elect governors, regents, and mayors. The results offer a fascinating insight into the current political landscape, albeit one that analysts need to approach with caution.
It is always

Indonesia has successfully won its bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council 2019–20, but what is the country likely to achieve?
There are, of course, significant constraints to what a non-permanent member of the Security Council can do within the UN

Last month, Indonesia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community was buoyed by a decision to remove the phrase “same-sex” from the article on fornication in the proposed Criminal Code (KUHP) bill, amid a raft of contentious legal changes that have sparked much debate